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MOOSIC — Pitching his first game in 10 days, Scranton/Wilkes-Barre’s Chris Leroux was cruising along until the sixth inning.

The RailRiders had already built a four-run lead but Pawtucket loaded the bases and brought the potential tying run to the plate in Alex Hassan.

Leroux, however, worked his way out of the jam and got Hassan to ground into a fielder’s choice to end the inning. The RailRiders then withstood another rally to defeat the Red Sox, 6-4, and salvage a split of a four-game series in front of a crowd of 4,272 on an unseasonably chilly Monday night at PNC Field.

Leroux gave up just four hits and one run and struck out four on 79 pitches in six innings of work.

“Chris was throwing a lot of strikes,” catcher John Ryan Murphy said. “The way his pitches move, if he’s in the strike zone, he’s going to get a lot of quick outs.”

The recently slumping Jose Pirela led off the bottom of the first with an infield single off of knuckleballer Steven Wright and advanced to third on a hit-and-run single to right field by Rob Refsnyder. Adonis Garcia followed with a sacrifice fly to right to put the RailRiders on the board.

After Kyle Roller struck out, first baseman Austin Romine knocked a double into the right field corner scoring Refsnyder from first and giving the RailRiders a 2-0 lead.

Ryan Lavarnway led off the top of the second with a single. But two pitches later, Hassan hit a line drive right at third baseman Rob Segedin. Lavarnway got too big of a jump off first and couldn’t get back in time as Segedin threw over for the easy double play.

The baserunning mistake would come back to haunt Pawtucket, as Garin Cecchini followed with a towering solo home run to right field. Leroux came back to strike out Deven Marrero to end the inning.

The RailRiders got to Wright in the third. Like he did in the first, Pirela led off with a single. A passed ball moved him up to second and a Refsnyder groundout advanced him to third. Garcia then came through with an RBI-single to right to put the RailRiders back up by two.

Roller worked Wright to a 3-1 count before ripping a double into the left center field gap to score Garcia. Then, Wright tried to strike out John Ryan Murphy with a knuckleball on the outside corner but Murphy stuck the bat out and blooped a single to right and score Garcia, putting the RailRiders ahead, 5-1.

“It’s always good to give your pitcher a little cushion to pitch with,” Roller said. “(Wright) was tough. It was different than anything you’re used to seeing. But to be able to get a couple runs early off that guy is a big momentum for the team.”

Leroux threw just 49 pitches in the first five innings but the Red Sox got runners on second and third with two outs in the sixth. Lavarnway then worked an eight-pitch walk to load the bases. Hassan then got the count to 3-1 before hitting a sharp grounder to shortstop Carmen Angelini, who flipped the ball to Pirela at second to end Pawtucket’s biggest threat of the night.

“That was a big inning and a big out,” manager Dave Miley said. “That was probably his last hitter, but he got through it, and kept it a four-run game and it ended up that it was a bigger out than maybe we thought in the sixth (inning).”

Pawtucket, however, did score a run in the seventh after Corey Brown ripped a two-out triple to right center. He then scored on De La Cruz’s wild pitch to cut the deficit to 5-2.

The RailRiders got that run back in the bottom half of the inning on Romine’s RBI-single to center.

The Red Sox then got to De La Cruz in the eighth when Travis Shaw drilled a two-run home run to right field to cut the deficit to two. But De La Cruz came back to strike out Lavarnway and Hassan to end the inning.

Matt Daley came on in the ninth and after getting Cecchini to ground out and Marrero to fly out, Brown connected on a double off the right field wall. But Daley settled in and struck out Dan Butler for his ninth save of the season.

“I have a lot of confidence in this team and our ability,” Roller said. “You go down 2-0 in a series, we want to scratch and claw and find our way back into a series and that’s what we did these past couple days.”

Contact the writer:

shennigan@timesshamrock.com

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